31 sÌ1e was to serve. To have faith and a chance to show it The Bishop thanked God in deep humjIit) for the chance that had been given to him. He had found, after leaving Oylegate, that he was not as great a scholar as they con- sidered him to be at home. He felt h m- self to be a big clumsy fellow, more at home on the farm than he would ever be away from It, and yet when he put on hi<; robes to say Mass he felt like a soldier in uniform on his wa} to fight for what he believed In Even in his youth the Bishop never aspired to saint- hood or martyrdom. To become, some- day, a truly good and faithful servant of the One he loved-that was his highest hope. When he was thirty-six }ears old, still plain F athel Tom and nowhere near being a bishop, he reminded him- self that we on earth are all exiles.. exiled from the Presence of i\.lmighty God But the kind of exile he felt., living inside his own body and dragging along while the priest within him strode proudly, that was an entirely different kind of exile-somebody inconsolable and <;tubborn who was not intelligent enough to undLrstand the earthlv same- ness between his own and other coun- tnes and who therefore in bewilder- ment tormented himself about the difference. Or you could say that an exile was a person who knew of a country that made all other countries seem strange. In that sense, the exile inside the priest, or living with the priest, hanging on to him, mIgh t be a helpful being, enabling the priest to dream SOllle- times and find a little res- pite in the tranquillity of memory and of familiar places. The Bishop, thir- ty-six years old, kneeling in meditation before his altar, arranged a sentence in h:s mind: ThE' strong resolutr priest finds rrspite in thE' tranquil recollec- tion of fanÛliar places and in that rE'spitf' gains thE' grac p to hE' rnorr humhlE' and morE' watch- ful in his care of his flock. . . . And then he ground his hands together in the impatience he had forbidden him se I f, the impatience that expressed a distress he feared be- cause he understood it What was he doing in- venting and pol"shing and making phrases that said nothing at all Anyone until now-I used to say Mass in the chapel in Oylegate every morning, and then I would walk down the lane to Poulbwee, and your grandmother \\ ould have breakfast waiting for me. I had been out of Ireland fourteen \ ears. I went out to the Missions after I was ordained and I didn't see Ire- land again for fourteen years. M \? lTIother was dead and there was only my brother at home. He never married and I suppose the loneliness got in on his mind. He lost heart. All the time I was there he kept talking about how he was gOIng to sell up the place and go to i\.lllerica. He had already sold off all the stock and all the furniture out of the parlor, furnIture that had belonged to our great-grandmother, and be- fore that. I tried to persuade him to get a hold of hImself and he said it was easy for me. I was always considered to be the scholar in the family, and he minded that. He said I was the fa- vorite with mv mother, and he may have been right, but she always in- tended the farm for hIm, although he wa the younger. He was in a terrible way, catching a rabbit now and again for his dinner. He slept most of the day and most of the night. He was ashamed of sleeping so much and he didn't like anybody coming near the place and gradually they all began to stay away. I never knew a place could go down as fast as Cooldearg had gone down the last time I saw it. J had no warning. After the fourteen years away I made for Cooldearg as fast as m) lègs could carr} me, and it was a gI eat shock, to see it. A great shock and a great lesson to me, to curb lllY vanity that I did not know I had. The Devil is always waiting to catch us in our weak moments. My hroth- er came out of the house and it was all I could do to keep myself from knock- ing him down. And yet the day I left he walked as far as Oylegate with me, where I got a lift into Wexford, and when we said goodbye I tu rned around and walked a hit back down the lane with him, and we shook hands and said goodbye agaIn.. and the tears were run- ning down his face, and down my face too. I watched him go. He never turned around until he reached the first turn and then he turned and lIfted up his arm to me and then he was gone. I never saw him again. He sold up the place as he said he would and went to America. I never heard from hIm. But while I was there, that last time, I said Mass in Oylegate ever) morning and then I walked down the lane to have breakfast at Poulbwee. I could draw a map of that lane for you. I used to play a game with the children at the mission. 'Going to Poulbwee,' we called it. They got to know the lane nearly as well as I did, and every field along the way, and they were never tired of hearing about the house." T HERE was a time when the Bish- op had looked on that lane from Oylegate to Poulbwee as the only path he knew through a maze that had no center and no form and no secret- worst of all, no secret. There was noth- ing secret and hidden that he could fer- ret out and destroy and punish himself for and do penance for There was nothing. There was only the maze As a young man, the Bishop had not un- derstood that when he became a mis- sionary priest he also became an exile, d 1 d ". " d " an t 1e two wor s, pnest an ex- ile," did not seem to him to be in ac- cord, and he felt it was unsuItable and dangerous for a priest to know himself to be an exile. He felt his homesickness to be self-indulgence, but he was home- sick al] the same. He had doubts about his own worth but no doubt about the authority of his vocation. HIs only de- \ \ , \ I'f \ I, \ ,\, t '\ 11> . j " -g \ t\- '-. "", "- '- '- .I \\ ( " , \h\ \\ \ \ ,\. \ \ \ \' '\ J \ ,\ ! : 'I . " (( I", '. "Being an innocent in this day and age 'IS no easy matter"